The Guantanamo Bay military tribunals on Wednesday won their first conviction without a plea deal since 2008. Only it wasn’t a terrorist who was convicted – it was a one-star Marine general sticking up for the rights of the accused to have a fair trial.
In defending the principle that attorneys ought to be able to defend their clients free from government surveillance, Brigadier General John Baker was ruled in contempt of court and sentenced to 21 days in confinement. He also must pay a $1000 fine.
Baker is a senior officer within in the highly controversial military commissions process: the Chief of Defense Counsel. Maj. Ben Sakrisson, the Pentagon spokesman for detentions, confirmed that Baker is being confined in his quarters – at Guantanamo Bay.
“The military commissions are willing to put people in jail for defending the rule of law,” Jay Connell, who represents another Guantanamo detainee facing a military commission, told The Daily Beast. “If they’re willing to put a Marine general in jail for standing up for a client’s rights, they’re willing to do just anything.”
Truth be told, I didn't read far enough to see the connection has already been made:
The shocking development at Guantanamo, described as a “national disgrace and an embarrassment” by the executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, came on the same day President Donald Trump publicly mulled detaining accused New York terror suspect Sayfullo Saipov at Guantanamo.
I'm sure this sentence has something to do with the strange nature of military courts, where fealty to superior officers overrides more mundane issues like due process of law and equal protection under the law. I say that not because I know anything about military law, but I remember what my Criminal Law professor told us, himself a former JAG: "Military law is to law as military music is to music."
So call me cynical.
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